mthew

A soft rain of pieces of cucumber magnolia fruit reveals a tree, thickly cloaked in big, thick leaves, busy with Red-eyed Vireos, Catbirds, four different species of thrush. Across the road, the noisier fall of hickory husks point to squirrels at work.

I abandoned the absurdly high-salaried and beyond-bullshit dot-com world just weeks before the attack on the World Trade Center in September, 2001. The cafeteria in our office building, Cross & Cross’s magnificent Deco-fantasy Twenty Exchange, was on the top floor, so those who went in early for breakfast saw it from on high. I saw,…

For those keeping count, I now have 1055 verified species recorded in Kings County on iNaturalist. “Verified” meaning they aren’t casual observations, which are reserved for cultivated or captive life-forms. Many of our urban plants were planted, meaning they’re casual observations by iNaturalist’s standards. Even a tree planted a century ago is still considered a…

A lot of small-scale drama on this venerable willow oak. I first noticed the Bald-faced Hornets at two different spots on the trunk. At this spot, they were actually going underneath the bark. I suspect they were after leaking sap. But it wasn’t just wasps. There were also flies, all rather smaller than the wasps.…

Hackberry Mosaic Virus. Also called island chlorosis. Not much explication of this, probably because the damage is cosmetic. I’d wager the genus is even in question. Viruses, people, are strange.

All perched together in a dying American chestnut.